By Kate Hill

Staff Writer

According to the most recent UN Refugee Agency global trends report, 68.5 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide in 2017. Among the displaced individuals were nearly 25.4 million refugees.

Cazenovia College alumnus and Syracuse resident Salat Ali arrived in the United States as a Somali refugee in 2005.

On April 23, 2019, Ali shared his refugee experience with the community at a special event hosted by the Cazenovia Public Library and sponsored by Cazenovia Welcomes Refugees (CWR) — a community-based initiative to address the global refugee crisis.

Ali’s presentation began with a “privilege walk” — an activity designed to highlight the ways in which privilege can provide individuals with a head start in life.

Ali explained that the starting line represented basic human needs and the finish line represented the American Dream. According to Ali, refugees start well behind the starting line.

“I want to talk to you about the story of what it’s like to start [way back] here,” said Ali, standing several paces behind the starting line.

Ali’s story began in Kenya’s Dagahaley Refugee Camp, where he was born and where his parents sought shelter after fleeing Somalia.

Although it was never easy for his family, Ali said, life became much more difficult when his parents divorced.

As a result of the separation, his father became the sole guardian of 6-year-old Ali and his 4-year-old brother. According to Ali, his father struggled to balance his dual roles of protector and provider.

After years of profound hopelessness, Ali, his father and his brother were selected for resettlement in the U.S. Ali, who was 9 at the time, could not believe that he had “won the lottery.”

After two years of processing, Ali and his family arrived in the U.S., filled with hope, joy, nerves and uncertainty.

They were resettled in a particularly poor section of Syracuse, surrounded by crime, gun violence and gangs.

In school, Ali struggled to fit in with the white students because he was black and with the black students because he was African, he said.

He explained that he was made to feel like he wasn’t enough, like he didn’t belong, and like he was taking the American Dream away from someone else.

“I hated being associated with refugees, because people always used that to attack me,” he said. “And I hated being associated with Africa, because people used that to attack me.”

Profound feelings of “otherness” led Ali to experience, for the first time in his life, depression.

Ali said he didn’t know what he was feeling and neither did his father — who had spent his entire life ignoring his mental health to focus on survival and meeting the basic needs of his family.

Ali’s only source of solace came from Refugee and Immigrant Self-Empowerment (RISE) — which provided him with a tutor and support — and the youth peace building and leadership development organization Seeds of Peace — which provided him with a safe space to un-bottle his feelings and to heal.

Ali was accepted to Cazenovia College and to its Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP) — a NYS academic and financial assistance initiative. He credited the college’s HEOP Associate Director Sheila Marsh for encouraging him to apply and guiding him through the process.

During his senior year of college, the Trump administration implemented its travel ban, preventing individuals from seven countries, including Somalia, from entering the country. The ban thwarted Ali’s efforts to bring his mother to the U.S.

It was then, Ali said, that he recognized his privilege as a new American and his advantages over the refugees who, like his mother, were left behind. He decided to use his elevated platform to project the voices of refugees and new Americans and to share their stories.

Since his senior year, Ali has been working on a film documenting the refugee experience in the United Stated and in Kenya.

“I turned to my community, and they responded wonderfully,” he said. “Because of them I have been able to continue this project.”

On Oct. 30, 2018, Ali returned to Dagahaley Refugee Camp and reunited with his mother for the first time in 13 years.

“My goal was to stay with my mom to get to know who she was for that one month,” he said. “She’s an amazing person and it encouraged me to continue to fight for her and to figure out a way to bring her here.”

Upon arrival in Kenya, Ali recognized how Americanized he had become and how out of place he was in his former home.

“I feel a lot more American than Somali and I feel a lot more American than refugee,” he said.

Instead of enjoying his time in Kenya, he was overwhelmed by the guilt he felt about his privilege as an American.

“I felt so many things in the refugee camp that when I came back here I struggled to continue my job so I could pay my bills,” he said. “It was very overwhelming.”

Recognizing that his mother could spend many more years at Dagahaley, Ali decided to use his time in Kenya to make her life as comfortable as possible. With just $2,000, he replaced the dirt floor of her house with cement, built a shaded structure and constructed a corner store out of which his mother could run a small business.

To conclude his presentation, Ali shared a number of photographs from his trip, including images of his extended family, the structure where he was born, his primary school, the maze-like refugee camp, children burning trash, and the structures he built for his mother.

Ali’s film, titled “Leaving Home, But Left Behind,” will premier at Cazenovia College.

Now an American citizen, Ali works actively with both RISE and Seeds of Peace, in addition to substitute teaching and serving on the board of the Syracuse Cooperative Federal Credit Union.

Local refugee serving initiatives and agencies

Cazenovia Welcomes Refugees is dedicated to engaging and supporting newly resettled refugees to promote their safety and societal inclusion.
The initiative grew out of the Common Grounds Challenge Grant (CGCG) — a local program that provided funding for initiatives to improve the Cazenovia community.
Established in October 2017, CWR represents a coalition of local groups united by the belief that refugees contribute to economic growth and bring new perspectives and cultural richness to the community and the nation as a whole. The coalition also shares the belief that small rural communities, like Cazenovia, can have a big impact on global issues.

Co-facilitated by Caroline Cargo and Cindy Sutton, CWR is supported by multiple sectors of the community, including the Cazenovia Central School District, Cazenovia College, Cazenovia Public Library, local faith communities, nonprofit groups, local government, businesses and private citizens.

CWR works in partnership with InterFaith Works (IFW) of Central New York and its Center for New Americans — an agency that provides resettlement and post-resettlement services to refugee families in Syracuse.

Prior to Ali’s presentation, IFW President and CEO Beth Broadway provided an update on national and local refugee resettlement.

Individuals who enter the US through its refugee resettlement program arrive through one of nine primarily faith-based organizations that work with, and are funded by, the State Department, she said.

In recent years, the resettlement program has failed to keep up with the increasing global refugee population. For the fiscal year (FY) 2019, President Trump reduced the cap on refugee admissions to 30,000 — the lowest number in the program’s history.

“Last year, when the cap was at 45,000, we didn’t even meet half of that; we only resettled 22,000 people,” said Broadway. “We have some real work to do to put forward the values and the traditions of this nation . . .”

Of the refugees that were resettled in the US in FY 2018, most were from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burma and Ukraine, with a small number from Syria and Somalia.

New York is one of the largest re-settlement states in the country. In her report on local resettlement efforts, Broadway stated that despite a lower national refugee cap, the community has resettled a greater number of individuals this year than the previous year.

“We are up against some very draconian policies and it is very tough in these times,” said Broadway. “But agencies like ours and the work that Salat is doing . . . and the work that CWR is doing [holds out] a light of hope, a light of positivity and a light of justice and mercy on behalf of refugees. And we are not going to stop . . .”

For more information on CWR, contact [email protected]. To learn more about IFW, visit interfaithworkscny.org. To support Ali’s documentary film project, visit his GoFundMe site.